This thread is about Cooler Master 690 III. For those of you who have read my previous threads will know that i love telling stories so this will not be any different, I am very very tired right now so more pictures will follow up soon.
Couple of things to keep in mind
1. It's been YEARS i have assembled a computer on my own, normally my subordinates used to do it for me or the shop keeper, this time i was bored so did it on my own THUS the messy result.
2. I am lousy and when it comes to cable management, infact i have never bothered about it until now, this is my first attempt to do any sort of cable management.
3. My room is a bloody dust magnet due to construction going on, Yes i am aware dust kills electronics and yes i am aware that its a bloody mess but this is limitation i have to live with
Purchased from Galaxy via Media Center (Khadda Market, DHA Phase 5, Karachi) - Khurram is a very nice chap to deal with.
I saw multiple images on web but was not prepare for the size of the casing / box i got. In comparison to the "mid tower" i was using this one is HUGE. I was reluctant to go for mid tower as I wanted to go for Storm Stryker but difference was of 7000 Rs and i decided with that 7k i could get a H60 water cooling for the processor (to be added later)
The box comes with branding all around, huge pictures of the case as well as featuring the features, the box is themed and is not plain "gataa" brown box and gives a good impression.
Although when i saw the size of the box i thought it would be VERY heavy well to be honest it was lighter than what i thought it would be, The box along with my existing Thermaltake casing to show the size difference.
Lets take this baby out of the box
The front view
The rear view .... this one has better ass than Thermaltake (perverts are more than welcome to grin on my statement here)
The top of the casing, all mesh in front the usb ports, power buttons etc are covered by a shiny cover, kind of neat way to hide them, also there is a small compartment / space to keep your stuff. Towards the back there is a space for a 240mm radiator or 2x240 mm / 2x120mm fans ... the lid is removable and will be shown later on
The cover removed
And now the "lid" towards the back removed (easily removed by one thumb screw towards the back on the casing)
Towards the back we see there is a 120mm CM fan pre-installed
These thumb screws are used to tighten the side and top covers
The side view, CM 690 III comes in two variants, with or without window, the one without window have provision for 2 extra fans while window version (the one i got) does not have any provision for fans on the side panel. Wish they had given atleast one fan to blow some air on the gpu.
The other side has a nice bulge which can come handy if you suck in wire management as i do (like me)
Another side view from behind
Covers removed and you can get the idea of how big this casing is
Just in case if you can't figure it out here is a normal HDD standing upright in the case to give you an idea of the size of this case, this is one complain i have with online reviews, they give technical jargon 25mm or 50mm or 100mm .... fuck that i don't want a bloody measuring tape to understand, show me something in reference so i can get a vague idea.
The hard drive bay is distributed in two sections, the lower section can accommodate three 3.5" drives while the upper section have place for four 2.5 SSD, the upper section can be resized to make it accomodate 3.5" drives (like i did) all you need to do is open three screws (top bracket, bottom bracket, top bracket from rear side) slide the separator out from the default position for 2.5" drives and slide it in the other slot to instantly convert the section.
The drive trays are easily removable
Apart from being removeable they are also resizeable, so you can make this drive holder (or bay or what ever the fancy term to explain this thing in which your hard drive goes) either SSD size or normal HDD size ... very neat and awesome
Open the brown box and you will find that CM have provided you with everything to screw things up ... well i meant in your system ...
A view from the other side to give you guys an idea of how much space is there for cable management (not much to be be honest for a newbie like me)
The resizable drive bays i was talking about, first i wanted to install the drives bottom but than i changed my mind, out of the box it comes in the following configuration
Two minutes and three screws later we have the following configuration
Most of my stuff lying around waiting for the new house, no we did not manage to get the barney and the bat in much to disappointment of my son
My internal storage .. 5 TB+ i have 3 TB external USB too and i am afraid soon i will run out of space, I have been asked this question before, apart from gaming (my steam directory is 800gb+) my major work revolves around working in 2k/4k prints, just to give you guys an example the recent movie Armaan (Geo Films) compressed version 1080p is around 300gb
The drives and the fan which is full of dust ...
Few pictures during the installation
The following components went in
3770k (oh i upgraded the processor from 3570k)
Asus mobo AZ77VLK
Gigabyte 7850 OC 2GB
2 x 8gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 Mhz
I had few CM fans lying around and i decided to put them in, 2 x 120mm fans on top as exhaust, 1 x 120mm fan on hdd bay (pulling air). The casing comes with 1x200mm fan right at front (haven't been able to take a picture of it) and 1x120mm exhaust fan towards back. I am thinking about getting a H60 or H100i for my processor lets see.
Bloody cables at the back ... it was ironic and funny when i was done with installation i found out that i could not put the cover back due to huge bulge which i managed to create being a noob, i was running out of time and patience so i did things my way
After a lil while (and lot of swearing) i managed to close the panels much to my horror that one of the HDD was not detected, to keep the story short the sata cable came off so i had to open the panel again rearrange and close it back
Overall i am very pleased with the product, the immediate change i noticed was idle mobo and cpu temps which were down to 29/32C from 37/44C respectively. I am sure once i am done with chipset and cpu cooling (for chipset thinking H60 for CPU thinking H100i comments are welcome) these temps will further go down and i will be able to run without any headache at 4.5 Ghz 24/7
Couple of things to keep in mind
1. It's been YEARS i have assembled a computer on my own, normally my subordinates used to do it for me or the shop keeper, this time i was bored so did it on my own THUS the messy result.
2. I am lousy and when it comes to cable management, infact i have never bothered about it until now, this is my first attempt to do any sort of cable management.
3. My room is a bloody dust magnet due to construction going on, Yes i am aware dust kills electronics and yes i am aware that its a bloody mess but this is limitation i have to live with
Purchased from Galaxy via Media Center (Khadda Market, DHA Phase 5, Karachi) - Khurram is a very nice chap to deal with.
I saw multiple images on web but was not prepare for the size of the casing / box i got. In comparison to the "mid tower" i was using this one is HUGE. I was reluctant to go for mid tower as I wanted to go for Storm Stryker but difference was of 7000 Rs and i decided with that 7k i could get a H60 water cooling for the processor (to be added later)
The box comes with branding all around, huge pictures of the case as well as featuring the features, the box is themed and is not plain "gataa" brown box and gives a good impression.
Although when i saw the size of the box i thought it would be VERY heavy well to be honest it was lighter than what i thought it would be, The box along with my existing Thermaltake casing to show the size difference.
Lets take this baby out of the box
The front view
The rear view .... this one has better ass than Thermaltake (perverts are more than welcome to grin on my statement here)
The top of the casing, all mesh in front the usb ports, power buttons etc are covered by a shiny cover, kind of neat way to hide them, also there is a small compartment / space to keep your stuff. Towards the back there is a space for a 240mm radiator or 2x240 mm / 2x120mm fans ... the lid is removable and will be shown later on
The cover removed
And now the "lid" towards the back removed (easily removed by one thumb screw towards the back on the casing)
Towards the back we see there is a 120mm CM fan pre-installed
These thumb screws are used to tighten the side and top covers
The side view, CM 690 III comes in two variants, with or without window, the one without window have provision for 2 extra fans while window version (the one i got) does not have any provision for fans on the side panel. Wish they had given atleast one fan to blow some air on the gpu.
The other side has a nice bulge which can come handy if you suck in wire management as i do (like me)
Another side view from behind
Covers removed and you can get the idea of how big this casing is
Just in case if you can't figure it out here is a normal HDD standing upright in the case to give you an idea of the size of this case, this is one complain i have with online reviews, they give technical jargon 25mm or 50mm or 100mm .... fuck that i don't want a bloody measuring tape to understand, show me something in reference so i can get a vague idea.
The hard drive bay is distributed in two sections, the lower section can accommodate three 3.5" drives while the upper section have place for four 2.5 SSD, the upper section can be resized to make it accomodate 3.5" drives (like i did) all you need to do is open three screws (top bracket, bottom bracket, top bracket from rear side) slide the separator out from the default position for 2.5" drives and slide it in the other slot to instantly convert the section.
The drive trays are easily removable
Apart from being removeable they are also resizeable, so you can make this drive holder (or bay or what ever the fancy term to explain this thing in which your hard drive goes) either SSD size or normal HDD size ... very neat and awesome
Open the brown box and you will find that CM have provided you with everything to screw things up ... well i meant in your system ...
A view from the other side to give you guys an idea of how much space is there for cable management (not much to be be honest for a newbie like me)
The resizable drive bays i was talking about, first i wanted to install the drives bottom but than i changed my mind, out of the box it comes in the following configuration
Two minutes and three screws later we have the following configuration
Most of my stuff lying around waiting for the new house, no we did not manage to get the barney and the bat in much to disappointment of my son
My internal storage .. 5 TB+ i have 3 TB external USB too and i am afraid soon i will run out of space, I have been asked this question before, apart from gaming (my steam directory is 800gb+) my major work revolves around working in 2k/4k prints, just to give you guys an example the recent movie Armaan (Geo Films) compressed version 1080p is around 300gb
The drives and the fan which is full of dust ...
Few pictures during the installation
The following components went in
3770k (oh i upgraded the processor from 3570k)
Asus mobo AZ77VLK
Gigabyte 7850 OC 2GB
2 x 8gb Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 Mhz
I had few CM fans lying around and i decided to put them in, 2 x 120mm fans on top as exhaust, 1 x 120mm fan on hdd bay (pulling air). The casing comes with 1x200mm fan right at front (haven't been able to take a picture of it) and 1x120mm exhaust fan towards back. I am thinking about getting a H60 or H100i for my processor lets see.
Bloody cables at the back ... it was ironic and funny when i was done with installation i found out that i could not put the cover back due to huge bulge which i managed to create being a noob, i was running out of time and patience so i did things my way
After a lil while (and lot of swearing) i managed to close the panels much to my horror that one of the HDD was not detected, to keep the story short the sata cable came off so i had to open the panel again rearrange and close it back
Overall i am very pleased with the product, the immediate change i noticed was idle mobo and cpu temps which were down to 29/32C from 37/44C respectively. I am sure once i am done with chipset and cpu cooling (for chipset thinking H60 for CPU thinking H100i comments are welcome) these temps will further go down and i will be able to run without any headache at 4.5 Ghz 24/7
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